Adidas's new TPU technology is a potential game-changer for the global sports
shoe market

In the global arms race that is the ultra-competitive world of sports shoe design, the launch of Adidas’s new trainers is like North Korea unveiling a long-range nuclear warhead: a game changer.

The secret weapon was unleashed last month with the fanfare of a Hollywood blockbuster, and with the claim that it represents a major breakthrough for runners of all abilities.

Over 90 per cent of air-cushioned trainers currently have midsoles made of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), an elastic substance that revolutionised sports footwear a couple of decades ago. Adidas’s Boost, a collaboration with the chemical giant BASF, is different.

The midsole of the new Energy Boost, the first shoe to showcase the technology, looks like spongy polystyrene, but is actually made up of hundreds of nuggets of super-springy thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). These not only absorb the stress of your feet pounding the pavement, as EVA does, but instantly ping back into shape – which in theory saps less of your energy, so you can run further and faster.

Sceptics can put the new technology to the test with Adidas’s miCoach interactive online training system. Just hook a Speed_Cell on to the shoe, sync it with your smartphone and get ready to log a new personal best.